Sinkhole, and other inexplicable voids Stories

In this trenchant collection from Krow (Fire Season), uncanny moments punctuate the characters' day-to-day realities. In "The Twin," a family welcomes the magical and strange appearance of another baby in their son Jace's crib, and name him Nicholas. The boys appear in other stories, including "Egret," when their older sister accidentally runs over a puppy and Nicholas, now a teen, attempts to resurrect it. Elsewhere, a female octopus navigates the challenges of dating when the species' males die after mating ("The Octopus Finds Love at Home"), and twin bank robbers reach the limits of what they can share with each other ("The Sundance Kid Might Have Some Regrets"). In "A Plan to Save Us All," a series of time travelers descend upon a Pacific Northwest suburb to warn residents of a deadly pathogen that will wipe them all out, but the time travelers turn out to be more interested in getting laid than stopping the virus, and the narrator has sex with many of them. In "Ultraboost Supplements for Good Health," a group of women agree to test a vitamin one of them has developed, causing them to turn on their husbands, menstruate uncontrollably, and possibly turn into werewolves. Krows's bracing and curious stories reveal what gets lost in the quest for perfection. Agent: Sarah Bedingfield, Levine Greenberg Rostan. (Jan.)

A book about relationships and environmental uncertainty in the Pacific Northwest. Through an interconnected series of fabulist tales, Krow explores forest fires, volcanoes, time travel, and the lives of octopuses with verve and wit, while also warning of environmental perils to come. In the opener, "The Twin," new parents Troy and Jenna discover a baby identical to their son, Jace, alongside him in his crib, sparking anxiety in Jenna. "What, exactly, was I afraid of?" she wonders. "It is difficult to fear an abstraction." The twin, whom they name Nicholas, along with Jace and their older sister, Ruby, become recurring characters throughout these 16 stories. In "Egret," Ruby, now grown, crashes her car into a fence, killing a neighbor's dog. "Ruby maintained," Krow writes, "that the accident happened not because she was drunk but because she badly needed to pee." Even in the midst of familial or environmental tragedies, Krow's prose maintains a playful spirit. After the dog's death, Nicholas realizes he has the ability to create birds and wildlife; he desperately conjures animals in the aftermath of a forest fire to combat the damage. Krow's writing is at its strongest in moments like this: descriptive, heartfelt, without polemics. When the family members all pile into a big hug, Krow describes them as being "like a geode in a rock, rings in a tree, a nut in the shell--like everything good in nature that comes in layers." Though Ruby and her brothers can't always communicate with each other, they show us that while "seasons seem to be going out of fashion," love is not. A playful yet earnest examination of how people interact with each other and the world. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.